Friday, June 4, 2010 – OOIDA Member Jim Lammers is urging fellow truckers to be on the lookout for his heavy-haul trailer that was stolen from the Coffee Cup Café parking lot in his hometown of Urbana, MO, early Wednesday, June 2.

The Dallas County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the theft of the trailer.

Lammers told Land Line that he had only had his Trail King TK80 double-drop RGN stretch trailer about six weeks before it was swiped out of the small lot in Urbana, located near Highway 65, where he has parked his other trailers many times over the years.

“This is a pretty small town so I thought it was safe to park there,” Lammers said. “I have never had anything like this happen to me before.”

He purchased his trailer from a bank that was selling off repossessed equipment. The equipment once belonged to Tulsa-based Arrow Trucking, which suddenly collapsed in December 2009. Hundreds of drivers and equipment were scattered all over the country after the company failed to help its drivers get home. Many were forced to abandon their trucks, some under loads, after they ran out of fuel.

“My first thought was that maybe a recovery company thought this was an abandoned trailer because I haven’t had a change to change the color. It’s still green and still has logos on it,” Lammers said.

He said he estimates that his trailer was taken between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. on Wednesday, June 2. A fellow trucker, who also parks at the same lot, noticed it gone Wednesday when he was heading back out on the road.

According to OOIDA’s TRACER website, the trailer is green and has the Arrow Trucking logo on both sides of the neck. It has a Missouri license number of 5251PB.

TRACER, the Transportation Alert Communication and Emergency Response program, was launched in the spring of 2009 by OOIDA. The program is a two-way communication system that sends alerts to members and coordinates information received from trucking members.

Members can sign up to receive text messages and e-mail alerts for truck thefts and missing persons.

Truckers may call the TRACER hotline at 866-950-2291 or visit www.tracersystem.us to get the latest advisory or if they have information to report about stolen cargo or missing persons, etc.